Israel Strikes Syria After Youth Is Killed

Israeli soldiers in the Golan Heights after an Israeli teenager was killed by fire from Syria.

Menahem Kahana / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By JODI RUDOREN

June 22, 2014

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Monday that it had struck Syrian Army targets in response to an attack in the Golan Heights the day before that killed an Arab-Israeli teenager and wounded two others.

The killing of the youth, Mohammed Karaka, in an attack on an Israeli defense contractor’s vehicle was the first fatality on the Israeli side of the Syrian border since Syria’s civil war started more than three years ago.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, called it “an unprovoked act of aggression against Israel, and a direct continuation to recent attacks that occurred in the area.” He said in a statement that Israel had targeted nine Syrian Army positions, including a headquarters and launching positions. The extent of any damage or casualties was not clear.

Mohammed, who the authorities said was 14 but some news organizations said was 13, had spent the first day of summer vacation at work with his father, who was driving an Israeli water tanker near Tel Hazeka along the disputed border and was one of those hurt in the blast.

Colonel Lerner said that he did not know whether an explosive device, rocket, mortar round or tank fire was used, but that “it was fired directly from east to west,” and that Israeli soldiers later found a hole in the fence that demarcates the cease-fire line.

There have been several exchanges of fire in recent months in the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed but much of the world still considers occupied territory. In March, Israel bombed Syrian positions after an explosive device wounded four Israeli soldiers patrolling the frontier, and two weeks before that, Israeli forces fired at two men they said were planting a bomb on the Syrian side.

Another soldier was wounded in October by shrapnel from mortar shells fired across the cease-fire line.

Eyal Ben-Reuven, a reserve major general in the Israel Defense Forces and former deputy of its northern command, described Sunday’s attack as “another step of deterioration” in the long-quiet area where he said “the sky is becoming cloudy.” General Ben-Reuven said that rebels were probably behind the attack, but that Israel nonetheless held President Bashar al-Assad of Syria responsible and had fired at his military to “tell them: you have to control your area and stop this terror organization acting against Israel.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke to the youth’s father, Fahmi Karaka, according to a statement from his office. “The enemies of the state of Israel are not ashamed to use any means, they are not ashamed to attack civilians and to kill children, as they have this morning,” Mr. Netanyahu said in the statement. “They do not distinguish between the Jewish citizens and the non-Jewish citizens.”

The father, who was hospitalized, told the Israeli news site Ynet that Mohammed had wanted to be a doctor. “He was very happy when I agreed to take him with me today, and now this joy has turned into a tragedy,” Mr. Karaka said. “I don’t want to go back to work,” he added. “I can only hope that something like this will never happen to any family, because no one can deal with this type of death.”

Correction: June 25, 2014

An article on Monday about an Israeli assault on Syrian Army positions that Israel said was in response to an attack in the Golan Heights that killed an Arab-Israeli teenager and wounded two others misstated the year that Israel captured the Golan from Syria. It was 1967, not 1973.